


a good cry

by erebones



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, During Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Stress Relief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 16:43:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17707931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: After weeks of stress and emotional turmoil, Fjord breaks down.





	a good cry

**Author's Note:**

> I had a really bad week and wrote this to cope.

Fjord never though he would feel so much relief at the sight of land. After weeks of open water and endless, arching sky, things he once associated with _home_ , he feels like the enormity of it is only a reminder of the things he now lacks. Freedom. Opportunity. The calming knowledge that someone wiser and more capable than he was in charge of the difficult decisions and all he needed to do was pull his own weight. Now _he_ is the one in charge, the one shouldering every quiet scoff and behind-the-back eyeroll, every scrap of derision and disdain and doubt. He doesn’t know how Vandran did it. And as flush with novelty as the first few days had been, he now finds himself eager to be rid of the shackles of captaincy.

The last few hours aboard the _Ball Eater_ are interminable. Everyone is scrambling to get things in order: forging ownership papers, tidying the name scrawled artfully along the side, ridding themselves of any flags or other paraphernalia that could mark them for pirates. Fjord spends most of it picking over the captain’s quarters for anything he might have missed and staring out the window watching Nicodranas draw near.

Solid ground underfoot is not exactly the respite he’d hoped for. His body is accustomed to the pitch and sway of the ship, and his sea legs revolt at the steadiness of Nicodranas’ cobbled streets. His stomach, confused, burbles with disquiet as they navigate their way through various chores and errands until they find themselves, once more, under the Lavish Chateau’s welcoming shade.

He picks at his dinner and contributes little to the conversation. Thankfully it goes mostly unnoticed—there are so many things to discuss and plan, and few of them pertain directly to Fjord. He can feel himself receding into the background, and while a quiet part of him rebels, the majority is grateful for the modicum of anonymity. As the night grows long, he excuses himself quietly on grounds of exhaustion and makes his way, not to the rooms the Nein have been provided, but downstairs, past the bar, and out into the night.

Nicodranas at night is half-familiar, suspended in a dim, blue-grey light suffused with the glow of a thousand oil lamps. He wanders the streets like a ghost. He has no particular destination in mind, only _away_ —seeking that same awe-inspiring expansive freedom he used to feel on board the _Tidesbreath_. It comes to him in slow stages. Each footstep takes him further from uncertainty and closer to a kind of truth, a truth forged out of winding streets and a cool breeze and the smudge of smoke in his nose.

By the time his wandering starts to slow, the moon is low in the sky, butter-yellow and soft, like a smudged replica in an oil painting. It beams over his left shoulder as he slopes into a relatively quiet dockside bar and orders a finger of whiskey at the bar.

It’s well past the midnight hour, now, and time has bled into something soft and meaningless. Part of him keeps waiting for the unforgiving blare of Jester’s voice in his head, worrying after him, but it doesn’t come. He’s not sure whether to be offended or relieved, and eventually settles into just relieved. One less thing to plague his mind.

The bar is grimy and swollen with salty damp beneath his fingers—a familiar, comforting feeling. It accompanies him as his mind spins and spins in fruitless circles, as one glass of whiskey turns into two, then three. At the bottom of his third he realizes he might be a bit tipsy. At the cusp of his fourth he doesn’t think he remembers the way back to the Chateau. By the time his glass is empty again he doesn’t think he cares.

He’s clumsily asking after a room for the night when he feels a tickle in his nose and something brush against his leg. His reflexes are slow enough that he can only flinch away in surprise when a reddish-orange tabby hops up onto the vacated bar stool next to him and stares at him with accusatory blue eyes.

“Oi! Scram, ya fucker,” the bartender snaps, more startled than unkind. He gruffly tries to brush Frumpkin away but Fjord holds out a hand to stop him.

“Sorry—he’s mine. Must’ve followed me from the ship, I’ll take care of him.”

“We don’t allow no animals in here,” the bartender says stiffly, but softens when Fjord plunks another silver on the bar. “Just take him with you when you go, all right?”

Through eyes that are already watering, Fjord nods and discretely itches his nose. As soon as the bartender’s back is turned, he muffles a sneeze in the crook of his elbow and glares at the cat. “Who invited you?” he demands in a whisper. “Get out of here.”

Frumpkin just blinks at him and tucks his tail neatly around his front paws as if he intends to stay exactly where he is. Fjord sighs. Relenting, he reaches out and strokes the top of the creature’s soft head. Frumpkin blinks again and starts to purr.

Fjord clears his throat and holds his breath, leaning a little closer to whisper, “Caleb are you in there?”

“You must really be drunk if you’ve started talking to cats,” remarks a familiar voice. A shadow moves at the corner of his eye and Caleb sits down at the bar on Frumpkin’s other side, a half-finished ale in his hand. He flips back his hood and banishes his familiar with a quick flick of his hand. “What are you doing here, Fjord?”

Fjord pulls his hand away from empty air and stares into his half-empty glass. “Getting away.”

“Without saying a word to any of us?” Caleb sounds disapproving on the surface, but there’s more to it—a tremor to the hand around his stein that Fjord can’t parse. He must have arrived some time ago, Fjord thinks, though he can’t remember which out of a handful of hooded, ragged-looking blokes that had come in in the last hour might have been Caleb. “Are you leaving, Fjord?”

He’s surprised enough to actually look at him, now. Beneath the bedraggled scarf and scruffy beard, Caleb’s expression is… sad? Could that be?

“Only for tonight.” He tightens his grip on his glass and slings the rest of it back in one go. It burns all the way down, tightening his throat as it goes. Not exactly the liquid courage he was hoping for. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Making sure you aren’t walking away,” Caleb says matter-of-factly. Like it’s inevitable. Like Fjord would just _leave_ , abandon the people who had helped him reach insurmountable heights despite their doubts and misgivings, walk away from the ones he had come to consider his _family_ —

“You know,” he says, low-voiced through the ache in his chest, “I wasn’t planning on it. But if you really think so little of me I suppose I could oblige.”

He pushes his stool back from the bar in the echoing loneliness of Caleb’s silence and stuffs his coin purse deep, intending to escape to the privacy of his small, dank room. But he’s caught on his way past with a hand to his arm, and somehow that simple, gentle touch is enough to stop him in his tracks.

“Fjord.” Caleb slips off his stool and stands before him, blocking his path. Heat bubbles up behind Fjord’s eyes and he looks away, off to some dark and dusty corner, just so he won’t have to meet Caleb’s emotive gaze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s fine,” Fjord says gruffly. To his horror, the sting of Caleb’s assumption is stabbing him more deeply than he was prepared for—like a blade puncturing a bloated wineskin, the fear and confusion and resurrected grief of the last several weeks wells up in him and overwhelms him. Ashamed, and a little bit horrified at this breach of the tough outer shell he’s worked so hard to construct, Fjord pushes past him and makes for the stairs.

“ _Fjord_ —” Caleb blurts, voice strangled as he goes, but Fjord cannot stop for him. The tears start as he reaches the stairs and he navigates them blindly, grateful for the late hour and lack of witnesses. He pauses at the top to fumble for his room key and hears Caleb coming up behind him. Dammit.

He cannot stop to turn and look. He finds the door and opens it with only a little fumbling. Inside, though it’s small and cramped and the bed looks terrifyingly rickety, he wastes no time in stripping out of his armor and collapsing to the mattress with a wet sigh. He doesn’t bother closing the door behind him.

It’s been a long time since he’s had a good cry. Once he’s given into it, it comes out of him in enormous waves, shuddering his whole body and drenching his palms like he’s come awake coughing saltwater. He’s tangentially aware of Caleb entering and shutting the door softly, but most of his attention is focused on weeping uncontrollably into his hands, so when he feels the gentle hand on his shoulder and hears the soothing, nonsensical murmurs of Zemnian in his ear, it only startles him into crying harder.

His head throbs and aches by the end of it. Like an overused dishrag that’s finally been wrung free of water, he slumps forward and braces his forearms on his knees. “Sorry,” he croaks.

Caleb just tuts quietly and rubs his hand along the collapse of his spine. The warmth and sturdiness of his touch is both comfort and torture—a few more tears drip from his eyes and he doesn’t bother to wipe them away. Just watches as they drip off the end of his chin and splat, one-two-three, onto the grimy floorboards between his feet.

“You’ve gotten pretty good at this,” he tries again after some time has passed. His throat feels less like someone has it squeezed in an unforgiving grip, but his voice is irreparably scratchy and muffled with the clog of his sinuses.

“Good at what?” Caleb asks.

“The whole… comfort thing.”

Caleb chuffs with quiet laughter. Like he’s been given permission—perhaps he has—he edges closer on the bed until they’re pressed hip to thigh, and squeezes Fjord’s opposite shoulder. “Beau is a surprisingly good teacher in that regard. I think she learned it from you, so. Full circle, _ja_?”

Fjord just nods, his throat still too tight for speaking. He feels disembodied, somehow, adrift from the usual moorings of his physical form, and it’s easy to lean into Caleb’s scrawny frame. Caleb falters a little before sliding his fingers into Fjord’s hair and scritching through the short strands at his nape.

“I am sorry,” he says quietly, as Fjord finds his equilibrium. “What I said before—I realize now how it sounded. You’ve been nothing but good to us, and I know you wouldn’t leave without good reason. And I think, perhaps, we have not been as good to _you_ as you deserve. I would not… begrudge you, is all. If you decided to strike out on your own.”

“This group… these people are all I have,” Fjord rasps. “You’re my family. Where else would I go?”

From his periphery, he can see Caleb wince. “We have not exactly been behaving like it. I am sorry for that, Fjord.”

“We all did what we felt needed to be done.” His shoulders slump further, and when Caleb tugs him down to lay on the lumpy mattress, he accepts the soft push-pull of his hands like Caleb is a baker and his body just the formless, unshaped dough. “It’s behind us now.”

Caleb lays next to him, flat on his back, and after a little arranging, Fjord lays with his head on Caleb’s bony chest, heavy and worn-out and warm. “You intend to stay the night here?” Caleb asks quietly, and the burr of his Zemnian vowels sound rich and vast like foghorns in the distance on a cloudy night.

“I paid for the room, didn’t I? May as well…”

“Will it bother you if... if I stayed?”

Fjord smiles a little, though the muscles in his face protest at such an untoward motion. “Was kinda hopin’ you would.”

“Right.” A brusque exhale, and fingers in his hair again, slow and steady against his scalp. His chest feels hollow, like a great knife has reached in and scooped out his insides, but to his surprise he feels a familiar vibration rising from within his tender ribs. He thinks fleetingly about stifling it, and the moment passes. Caleb shifts a little underneath him and his thumb grazes the tip of Fjord’s ear. “Fjord…”

“Mm?”

“Are you… purring?”

“If you wanna call it that.” His voice is sonorous and slow as exhaustion weighs down his bones. Despite it, he is warm and comfortable and at ease, and Caleb’s fingers draw the rumble out of him like the patient fingers of a weaver picking out the weft of a sprawling tapestry. Piece by piece, his body sinks into a pleasant fog, tension unspooling from his marrow and leaving him soft, quiescent in the circle of Caleb’s arms. “G’night, Cay,” he says, or thinks he says—if Caleb responds, he doesn’t hear it, tipping over slowly into a deep, dark pool of quiet water and to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'ed, but the idea for fjord purring at the end came from grey, ty my dear <333


End file.
